Once Upon a Narrative
by Solstice Muse
Summary: A Ron/Hermione story told using different narrative modes. Thanks to The Steppy One for putting the idea into my head to format it like this.
1. First Person

First-person

_A jolt and then a thud._

_The slow spread of liquid absorbed by the worn carpet, skimming over balding patches and lingering at coarse, densely woven threads, and the toppled vessel lying empty on its side._

_Desperate hands scrabbling at the spill as it is absorbed into the damp patch, then a cloth being pressed down, and finally a failed attempt to wring the moisture back into the upright vessel._

_A shiver, like a draught only a worm's width, slithers down from neck to the small of the back and the cloth scrubs at the spill. No salvageable amount left, simply a mess to be removed and cleaned._

_Knuckles graze the rough carpet and the shaking hands scour harder at the stain._

_The stain fades from memory as it fades from the carpet until..._

I woke with a shiver. My eyes opened and I pulled the covers up, tight, beneath my chin. I rolled over, dragging the warm blankets and sheets with me and then drew my knees up to my chest with a deep exhalation.

A warm hand at my waist made me jump.

"Shit!"

"Are you feeling all right?" Hermione's voice sounded smooth but rough, like velvet being caressed in the wrong direction, and heavy with sleep.

I hummed my satisfaction and rolled over and into her side. I closed my eyes and buried my face into the side of her neck. My long arms pushed and coiled around her body and an even longer leg draped itself over her thighs.

"Just woke up with a scrap of a dream still on my mind or something. Just weird," I mumbled into her skin.

Her hand stroked my hair and the light pressure of her lips against the top of my head made me smile, lazily.

"You didn't happen to dream you were cold did you?" Hermione whispered. "Because you stole all the covers from me and shivered."

"Don'member." I yawned.

She crushed her body into mine, firmly, and pushed her fingers into my hair to massage my scalp as she spoke with a slight pout.

"You rolled away from me too. You never roll away."

"Hmmm?"

"You turned your back on me when you woke up just now," Hermione said as she prodded me with a persistently ink stained finger.

I snored. Faking sleep was always the best way to get myself out of trouble.

* * *

I couldn't get Ron's sudden coldness off my mind. Even listening to Ginny didn't titilate me like it usually did.

"I can't ask mum for any tips on birth control charms," Ginny sighed as he stirred her tea and propped her head up in her cupped palm, "firstly because...well come on, seven children, how good can the charms _she_ uses be?" Ginny snorted and then lazily dropped her teaspoon back into the saucer. "Secondly, my birth control is supposed to be waiting until I'm married."

Ginny rolled her eyes at this and sipped her tea.

"Well..." I began before Ginny continued.

"It's as if I never counted backwards nine months from Bill's birthday and passed her and Dad's wedding day along the way! She's one to lecture me on sex before marriage." Ginny clonked her teacup back down onto the saucer and flipped back her hair. "So I figured you must have a good spell, seeing as Ron's a Weasley, y'know? Care to share?"

"Um," I didn't know what thought to absorb first, "I don't have any spells. I've never looked for one."

Ginny looked at me with great scepticism.

"I've read about them obviously," I quickly added, "but using contraception charms at fourteen would have been a waste of time so I kept on reading."

"Hermione," Ginny began, still unconvinced, "you and Ron were over your main hurdle, that being yourselves, before you went off camping for a year. You can't tell me you were totally unprepared."

"For what, losing my virginity while Harry slept mere feet away?" I exclaimed.

"You spend the night in Ron's bed all the time. Don't tell me all you do is hold hands!"

"If you must know, my mother came with me to the GP and got me a prescription for the pill."

"What pill?" Ginny blinked, blankly.

"The birth control pill."

"This is the Muggle way of doing it, right?"

"Yes it is and don't assume that all we do in Ron's bed is have sex. He's actually very content to just sleep with me. He's been through the crazed hormonal passion stage with Lavender and now..."

"You get the dull passionless Ron," Ginny said with a furrowed brow, "oh lovely."

"He's not passionless; we're just not going at it like rabbits like you and Harry." I said as I swirled my tea in the cup and watched as it dipped in the middle like the brown whirlpool.

"Is there something wrong though?" Ginny said with a frown of genuine concern. "He's Ron, you should be fighting him off."

"He's more thoughtful then you give him credit, thank you, Ginny." I snapped.

"And when have you known Ron's thoughts to lead him anywhere good?" Ginny threw back. "Ron's happiest when he doesn't over think things. He doesn't think too much when he plays chess does he? Ron's best when he's impulsive, instinctive, and spontaneous."

"Ron's at his best when he's not limited by other people's expectations of what he can do. He can be thoughtful and he is, very much so."

"Blimey," Harry said as he padded through to the kitchen, rubbing the back of his head and ruffling the bed hair he was sporting into an even bigger mess, "your brother's away with the fairies this morning."

He dropped down into a chair beside Ginny and yawned as he leaned across to kiss her on the cheek.

"Mornin'."

"Your breath!" Ginny reeled away from him and held up both hands in self defence.

"What's Ron done?" I asked as I looked over my shoulder and waited for him to appear at the doorway.

"Huh? Oh, just being slow. He's not the sharpest tack this morning. You must have worn him out." Harry smirked.

Ginny met my eyes and we shared a silent exchange that I had to break with a forced cough.

"Well, he had a strange dream last night and it kept him from settling back down."

"Oh yeah?" Harry grinned as he looked up at the doorway. "Wet dreams at your age?"

"What?" Ron said, looking baffled as he pulled up his loose fitting pyjama bottoms and scratched his belly, exposed by a too short t-shirt.

"Last night, you had that dream, remember?" I said as I smiled and reached over to take his hand.

"Oh right, Ron said before picking up a piece of toast and stuffing it into his mouth without butter.

"So have you woken up yet?" Harry asked him.

"I'm 'wake," Ron grunted as he dropped into the chair beside me.

"Got an answer to my question yet?" Harry said with a patient smile.

"Oh, um...Ollivander, yeah. We can take the fragments of wand to him and see if he can identify it this afternoon. He should be able to give us something to go on at least."

"That's good, I thought you were going to tilt your head to the side and think about it for another hour." Harry sniggered.

For a brief time I found myself drawn into another meaningful look with Ginny. It was Ginny who broke first this time as she turned her attention to her brother.

"I bet a full stomach will sharpen you up, eh Ron."

Ron looked at his sister, smiling and chewing at the same time, and then around to address me.

"So did I tell you about the case? I told you about the wand fragments, right? Well anyway, we have specialists and geniuses like you to ask but we figured th-"

"You figured," Harry interrupted before delivering his compliment to me rather than Ron, such a boy thing to do, "he knows the pride Ollivander takes in his job and that he's not been the same since Malfoy Manor so he suggested we make him feel invaluable by asking for his help."

Ron shrugged while I beamed at him.

"He's a skilled craftsman, it makes sense," Ron mumbled.

"And you're the one with the amazing mind who thought of that." I whispered into Ron's hair as my hand slid along his thigh and squeezed his leg.

Ron looked momentarily uncomfortable and swallowed, seemingly painfully.

"Well I just thought because of the wand weighing, they got him for a reason didn't they? Can't take credit for stating the obvious."

I let my hand fall away under the table and tried to hide my disappointment at Ron's response.

"The wand weighing?" Harry frowned. "After everything we went through in that cellar and then at Bill and Fleur's with him you know him well enoug-"

"That wasn't my first thought when I said it okay?" Ron said, looking tense.

I held my tongue and waited. If his temperament changed then he was simply distracted by other things but if he stewed on whatever it was then I'd start to worry.

Ron picked up another slice of dry toast and reached for the butter knife before muttering an apology.

"Sorry, I had a really weird night." His eyes moved sideways to look at me and he chanced a smile. "My amazing mind leaves you with no covers. I'm surprised you put up with it."

His leg nudged mine and I slipped my hand back up his thigh where his met it half way. Fingers interlocked and all was well again.

For now.


	2. Second Person

Second-person

The dawn sky is a cool blue haze scored with horizontal lines of pink and purple light. Two wispy trails of smoky cloud cross the full moon as it glows and grows warmer in colour as it nears the horizon. This isn't like the dawn light you're used to, more like a silver sunset.

A thick layer of frost crystallises upon every surface it touches and the air is clean and crisp.

You lean against the window ledge, pulling your thick dressing gown around your body tightly for warmth, and watch the moon pale and then sink away. The pinks and purples become a watered down shade of pastel in violet and lilac.

You sigh and then flinch as you hear Ron grunting behind you. You turn in time to see the sleep-disoriented young man jolt up from his bed and fling out his arm. He knocks the glass of water you rose early to fetch for yourself from the side table. The glass clonks upon the rug but doesn't break. Molly Weasley had more sense than to buy you fragile glassware. The water spills and darkens the corner of the rug beside the bed.

Ron swears and rolls himself out of bed and onto his knees. He grabs at a bed sheet and begins scrubbing at the spill in a panic.

"Ron?" You frown as you cross the bedroom to approach his hunched form.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit!" Ron hisses as he rights the glass and sees it is completely empty before dabbing at the spill once again.

"Ron," You crouch beside him, fondly, and draw your wand, "_Tergeo_!"

The spill is siphoned away from the rug and Ron stares down at the spot, blinking, before turning his head to look across at you with an expression of hurt disbelief.

"What did you do that for?"

You stiffen before gently rubbing his back in an attempt to soothe him.

"You forgot you were a wizard again, it was just a little spill, no harm done."

Ron looks back down at the place that he'd been cleaning up just moments before.

"But it's gone now."

"Yes, all gone." You smile and nod, wondering what kind of dream had caused Ron to wake up so confused. "It doesn't matter. I can get some more later."

Ron sighs and slowly nods before rubbing at his forehead and then pushing his hand farther back to shove the hair away from his face. He gets to his feet and looks past you to the window.

The sun is just appearing and golden light illuminates the dishevelled haystack of copper hair. He eventually smiles at you.

"Morning," he says, croakily, before clearing his throat. "Sorry 'bout that. I'm a clumsy git this early in the day."

You smile at him and step forward into a hug.

"You missed a stunning sunrise," you say as you squeeze his body tightly and nestle your head against his chest.

"Damn, not _another_ one!" he chuckles.

You laugh. Ron never has been as fond of the crack of dawn as you are. You sit on the bed and pull him down beside you.

"Did I wake you or were you having another strange dream?"

He rubs his face, stubble scratching at his palm, and huffs out a sigh.

"I dunno," he says with a shake of the head, "I think I was just flailing my arms about. You said I tend to spread out on the bed didn't you?"

You chuckle and run your hand along his jaw, he really needs to shave, before stretching up and kissing the corner of his mouth.

"Fortunately you're as thin as a rake so there's still room for me," you say as you change your position and ease him backwards onto the bed, kissing all the way.

Ron's hands move to your waist as you straddle him and then spare your poor lips by moving down to trail kisses against his chest. The hairs are finer and softer there.

"You feeling randy this morning, Miss Granger?" Ron says with laughter in his voice.

"I have to make the most of you being awake early enough for us to do this before showers," you pause to plant another kiss against his skin, "and breakfast," and another, "and work."

"I can be late for work." Ron sighs as you slip his loose pyjama bottoms down.

"I can't," you say before cradling his hardening dick in the palm of your hand and stroking it from half mast to full, "so it's now or never eh?"

He's pulling off your nightie and doesn't register your comment.

"And this time Harry's not watching," you whisper as you throw the thin layer of cotton aside.

Ron frowns at you.

"Mentioning Harry right now really doesn't do it for me, love."

You roll your eyes and lower yourself down onto him, moaning as you feel him pushing inside you, and your hair falls forward across his chest like a thick brown curtain.

"Maybe the clatter of basilisk fangs and the hiss of Parseltongue on your lips will get you going." You smile into a kiss against his parted lips.

"I have no idea what you're talking about but if it makes you randy, what the hell!" Ron mumbles before pushing his tongue into your mouth and snogging you hard.

You pull back after a few seconds and push him flat against the mattress by his shoulders, examining his face for a smirk or any kind of confirmation that he's simply being dense.

"What?" Ron frowns.

"Are you pretending you don't remember our first kiss for a reason?"

His frown deepens.

"Huh?"

You wriggle off him and grab the dressing gown to pull around yourself.

"Have you gone off me?"

Ron's eyes bulge wide and he jerks into a sitting position before wincing and then pointing at his erection.

"Does this look disinterested to you?"

"So why are you being...Ron, were you hit with a Confundus at work or something?"

"It bloody well feels like it!" he snaps. "What have I done wrong?"

"Tell me about our first kiss."

He blinks and then shakes his head.

"I was shitting it about Quidditch and you gave me a kiss for luck," he says with a shrug.

"No, first real kiss. Our first snog, Ron."

His eyes move to one side and he looks as if he's thinking hard.

"I'm taking you to St Mungo's," you say as you grab him by the hand and yank him up from the bed, pausing to pull his pyjama bottoms back up.

Ron bends double over the tent the cotton is forming at his groin and waddles to the toilet.

"There's nothing wrong with me, woman!" He grumbles. "It's first thing in the morning and you expect me to remember everything?"

"Our first kiss in the heat of battle," you snap, "you don't have to dig very deep for that!"

The door closes and you worry your lip between your teeth before marching towards Harry's bedroom door and hammering on it. It opens before you expect it to and you end up punching your best friend in the throat. Harry staggers back and chokes a little before glaring at you and catching his breath.

"Can't you two pick a fight in the afternoon or something?" Harry massages his throat and looks at you with anger.

"You be honest with me," you point a finger into his face, "did he get hit on the head or cursed or something at work and you're not telling me because of some stupid boy oath of secrecy?"

Harry's anger fades instantly.

"What d'you mean did he hit his head?"

He doesn't wait for an answer. He charges towards the toilet door. You follow and gasp as he begins hammering on it with his fist.

"Get out here, Weasley!"

The toilet flushes and the door opens a crack. Ron peers out and whispers, urgently.

"I need a minute, Harry."

"What the f-" Harry soon catches up with him, understanding why a man might not be ready to leave the toilet. He pulls the door closed. "We're putting a pot of tea on. Get out here as soon as you're done."

"And wash your hands!" You add, before blushing, furiously.


	3. Third Person, subjective

Third-person, subjective

The Healer was looking at Ron as if he was wasting his time. Ron looked at Hermione with annoyance. Did she really need to make a show of hims as well as herself, he wondered. Harry was outside looking at the closed door, furious that he hadn't been allowed to go in too. Though they were right to keep him outside, he would probably have shouted a lot.

"So you forgot your anniversary and your young lady brought you here," the Healer said with disdain.

"He forgot a pivotal moment of the Battle of Hogwarts!" Hermione said, sitting forward in her seat and losing her patience with the man.

"Kissing." The Healer said as he tapped his quill on the edge of his blotter.

"He wouldn't have forgotten it!" Hermione banged both hands down on the desk.

"It was first thing in the morning," Ron said as he slid a soothing arm around her and tried to ease her back into a less confrontational position, "I'm sorry."

"Mr Weasley," the Healer said, refusing to address Hermione at all now, treating her like the typical hysterical woman, "have you experienced any memory loss?"

"No," Ron shook his head hoping this time and this person would actually take his word for it.

"He's slow!" Hermione interjected.

Ron turned his head and gave her a pointed look.

"Excuse me?" If it hadn't been his Hermione talking he would have reacted a lot worse to this.

"Not like that," Hermione shook her head and waved a dismissive hand, "I mean he does remember eventually but he has to really think hard about it."

"So, there isn't in fact any memory loss." The Healer said, slamming down his quill and huffing.

"He's not usually like this and he's an Auror, he could have hit his head."

"Did you hit your head?" The Healer asked Ron.

"No," Ron said with a wince, knowing that Hermione was sure to explode at her fears being dismissed.

"How many hours a day do you work?" The Healer's short fuse was almost burned down completely by now.

"Um...well eight at the shop, with an hour off for lunch, and I train for an hour before and then go on a beat for four hours afterwards. If it's my day off from the shop I do two hours training and then a nine hour shift with the team."

"Up to thirteen hours," the Healer said as his eyebrows rose, significantly.

"Not all the time," Ron sat forward, "if the shop's slow or I'm needed on a case I work something out. My brother's flexible like that."

The Healer looked to Hermione.

"Yet you brought him to me to find out why he's a bit slow when he eventually gets some sleep and you wake him up."

"Hey," Ron interrupted, "leave her alone."

"But he's so distant," Hermione ignored the fact that she was being blamed and persisted, "and he has these dreams. The dream wakes him up."

"Mr Weasley, I have the cure for all your woes," the Healer said as he scribbled something onto a scrap of paper, folded it and handed it across the table to him, "either of those things will do you a power of good and both will be even better."

Ron unfolded the paper and read the note.

_Leave one of your jobs._

_Leave one of your girlfriends._

* * *

"The fucking cheek of it!" Harry ranted. "Did he even examine him? No!"

"He's probably right, I was just overreacting," Hermione said with a sigh.

"Even if you were he should at least do his job rather than insult you for ten minutes and then accuse Ron of cheating on you."

"He was just a snarky bastard, let it go," Ron said with a careless shrug.

"He probably didn't believe that Ron was really doing two jobs at once and that one was a cover for a mistress," Hermione said, "I'm sure he's seen that a thousand times."

"Not from a Weasley," Ron blurted, "we don't do that."

Harry grinned at his friend before calming down and dropping into a chair.

"Did you really forget your first kiss?"

"I just got my wires crossed, she was describing the snog and I was thinking of the peck on the cheek, that's where she lost me," Ron explained, "nothing more to it."

Harry smirked.

"You big softie."

"What?"

"You count that little kiss for luck as your first kiss."

"Exactly," Hermione added, "I thought men didn't think a kiss counted unless there was a tongue involved."

"That's sexist that is," Ron wagged his finger at her with disapproval, "and besides, I tongue kissed Lavender first so I don't count tongues as anything special."

Hermione stared at Ron and neither of the young Aurors knew what to expect. Eventually she reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you're so sweet."

Ron blushed and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Oh give over!"

Harry chuckled and then took the piece of paper with the Healer's wringing on and balled it up to throw into the fireplace. The ball of paper bounced off Kingsley Shacklebolt's bald head and Harry almost fell off his chair in his haste to jump to attention and apologise.

"Never mind that, Auror Potter," Kingsley said with weary amusement, "everything all right?"

"I'm fine sir," Ron said with a smile and a nod.

"Was this a work related health issue?" Kingsley asked, scrutinising Ron's face in a way that made him feel very uncomfortable.

"No sir," Ron said, brightly, noticing that Hermione had drawn breath to say something about his long hours, "just a misunderstanding."

Kingsley nodded, having seen that Hermione had been stifled but not pushing the subject, and then turned to Harry. He was looking at his friends and appeared to be going along with Ron's side of the story.

"We have some loose ends from the investigation at the docks but the new recruits can handle that," he said before addressing Ron in particular, "Take a couple of hours and then come in for the paperwork."

Ron's smile faded.

"I still get the paperwork?"

Harry chuckled.

"You never escape the paperwork," he said as he slapped Ron on the back. "Thanks sir, we'll see you in a couple of hours."

Kingsley nodded and his face vanished from the flames. Hermione turned on Ron and was about to scold him for not mentioning how much work he was doing.

"I'll speak to George and we'll work something out," Ron said, holding up his hand to stop her before she got going. Maybe Verity wants to swap with me, she can go full time and I'll go part time."

"It'll get George used to him not being there," Harry added.

Hermione took a deep breath and considered their plan for a moment. She let the air leave her puffed out cheeks and took Ron's hand.

"Let's go for some lunch then, shall we?"

* * *

"We wasn't expecting Miss in the office today," one of the free elves trotted over to Hermione and bounced a little before her, eager to be given a job to do.

"Well I was cleared for the whole day but Ron went into work for the afternoon so here I am," Hermione threw her hands outwards and smiled at the elf in his Ministry uniform.

"We has been working with the elves union all morning, Miss."

Hermione groaned.

"What fun that must have been. How much damage control do I have to do today?"

While Hermione wanted the House Elves to be strong willed and independent she hadn't foreseen that a large number of them would take their strong wills and independence and rally against her.

They had a point in one respect, she conceded, the point of her crusade had been to convince all elves that there was a difference between working for humans and being owned by humans. She'd given them a speech explaining that she wasn't trying to take them away from their homes and human families. She didn't want to replace them or prevent them from doing the jobs they took such pride in. All she wanted was for them to be there out of choice and treated like every other employee.

Some elves had resisted, terrified of change, but she had some eager recruits who would liaise on her behalf and explain that it was about having the freedom not to change anything at all in their lives. If they chose to work for free then they could. If they chose to be ill treated then nobody would interfere.

Hermione hated that she had to back down a little on the cruelty side of things but ordering a battered elf to do what she thought they should do wasn't really any better than beating the poor thing in the first place.

She walked a fine line and often lost her balance.

In her efforts to push the choice aspect onto as many elves as possible one of them had asked her who it was who had chosen her to be their spokesperson. There had been an election where all the elves could vote for who they wanted to have her job.

She was the only person standing for the position so it was no surprise that she won but the assertive elves had formed a union who would often send letters to her office reminding her that if she didn't want them to answer to any human then they wouldn't answer to her either and that she was to mind their own business.

Ron had tried to cheer her up after union flare ups by telling her that the very idea of an elf union would have been unimaginable before her but she still hated that she was seen as something of a dictator.

"It's like Orwell," she sighed, "I got them to run the farm for themselves rather then be slaves to the farmer and the first thing they did was divide into factions and sell the horse for glue."

"Miss?" The elf looked up at her and then reached into a desk drawer for a bottle of glue. "You is wanting this?"

"No thank you, I was speaking metaphorically."

The elf's huge eyes lit up.

"That's be when you say something is something when it isn't!"

"That's right."

"And the simile is when you says something is like something."

"Well remembered. This is why you're my best speaker, Churchill."

The elf puffed out his chest and stood, awaiting further instructions.

"You can tell the Union that I'm in the office if they want to nominate a representative to come and talk to me."

The elf saluted and then vanished with a pop.

She sat at her desk and straightened her blotter, her inkwell, her quill and then pulled her chair into the desk so closely she could hunch over it and write for hours. She reached for her quill and dipped it into the ink well before pausing and stretched out her other hand to shift the photo frame on the corner of the desk towards her by two degrees. She smiled.

Harry, Ron and herself were smiling out at her. They were relaxed and the sun bounced off their hair. She stroked her finger against the glass and the image of Ron ducked and then laughed at her.

He was even pulling away in photographs now.


	4. Third Person, objective

Third-person, objective

Hermione was trying to discreetly remove one of her hairs from the soup base.

"You look very red," Harry said as he joined her and looked down into the pot of simmering liquid.

"It's a hot stove," Hermione hissed.

Harry backed off a little. He still showed some interest in the fact she was cooking, however.

"So what soup is it then? Is it a broth?"

"It's Molly's special soup," Hermione's tone was still unusual. Her shoulders appeared tense as she stirred the mixture. She referred to the scribbled note on the counter beside her, talking to herself. "Add shallots…well I've got onions and they're the same thing aren't they? Finely chop some parsley." She looked around at the pile of ingredients she had strewn all over the counter top.

"Are they in this bag?" Harry offered, helpfully.

"That's curly cale!" Hermione snapped before picking up some twigs of rosemary and sawing through them with a bread knife.

"Um, Hermione, I don't think you're supposed to put the woody bit in," Harry said before backing away from her glare and falling into the seat behind him. "Sorry."

"A herb is a herb."

George bounded into the kitchen with Ron and slapped Harry on the back.

"The new batch works brilliantly, we're geniuses! Well, I'm a genius and you're occasionally accidentally brilliant," he nudged his younger brother in the ribs as he teased him, "but together…" As George caught sight of the red faced witch throwing vegetables into a cooking pot as if they were weapons he abandoned his proud boasts. "Hermione did you just put a raw baking potato into that stew?"

"It's a soup!" Hermione turned on him, hair wild and eyes blazing. "It's Molly's special soup!"

"Mum has a special soup?" George frowned.

"Apparently," Ron shrugged.

"Does it have a secret ingredient?" George said as he peered over Hermione's shoulder.

"If it did it wouldn't be in there," Harry mumbled.

Hermione grabbed a knife and began to roughly chop a whole artichoke, face reddening and shoulders tense.

"Woah, wait," Ron said as he jumped forward, "you have to remove the choke from the heart or we'll all die of-"

Hermione was clearly unaware that he was right behind her. She spun around, drawing breath to verbally lash out yet again. Before she could utter a single word she had gesticulated with the knife wilding hand and sliced into his palm with the blade.

"Fuck!" Ron pulled his hand away and clenched it into a tight fist before kicking at the kitchen counter.

"Oh god, sorr-" Hermione dropped the knife and clamped her hand over her mouth.

"Shit, Hermione!" Harry gasped as he got to his feet and pulled her away from the stove and everything she could do damage with.

He forced her down into a chair and then turned to see George prying Ron's hand open.

"Lemme see," he said with a calm authority.

"It's fine," Ron winced, "I'm only bleeding."

Hermione began to cry and Harry hunched before her and put his arms around her.

"It's nothing," Ron said, forcing a smile onto his pained face before opening his hand to show her his palm, "see, it's just a… fuhhhh."

As Ron's fingers curled back and George wiped the blood from his exposed palm they saw just how deep the cut was. Ron's knees buckled and he dropped to the floor. George caught him halfway down and lowered him the rest of the way, propping him against a cabinet.

"Bit girl's blouse aren't you?" George said, still looking focused and serious as he moved the tip of his wand back and forth over the cut.

"Ron?" Hermione squeaked, "I'm sorry."

"Hey," George patted Ron's face and the pale skinned wizard flinched into alertness again, "your girlfriend's talking to you."

"Wha?"

"Don't faint, she'll get hysterical," George whispered before looking at the tender pink flesh forming over the cut. "Move your fingers for me."

Ron wriggled his fingers and George smiled and then swatted Ron about the head.

"I knew you two were a wild couple but I never thought she'd actually go at you with a knife!"

Hermione wailed and yelled incomprehensibly into Harry's shoulder.

"Oh well done!" Harry said to George with a huff.

"Can you get me s-" Ron began before George slapped his hand onto his thigh and grunted up to his feet.

"I'm on my way now," he said before shaking his head and smirking at his little brother, cockily, "and to think you wouldn't let me cut you when we were testing it."

"Oh sod off and get it will you?" Ron grumbled before George hauled him to his feet by the elbow and dumped him into a chair opposite Hermione.

"Back in a bit," George said as he bounded towards the fireplace with the same energy as he'd arrived.

Ron reached across the table and patted Hermione's arm.

"No more blood, all better now, see?" Ron smiled at her as she peered through her veil of hair at him.

"I'm sorry," she sniffed.

"That's okay, you didn't mean it."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and then turned in her seat to lean across the table and take Ron's partly healed hand. She lifted his palm to her lips and kissed it.

"There, all better," Ron said with a smile.

Hermione crumpled and began to snivel again.

"What?" Ron and Harry asked at the same time.

"My soup's horrible!" She wailed.

"I don't doubt it for a second, love. But why are you making soup in the first place?" Ron said in a comforting tone that was akin to a parent speaking to a child.

"Because you've gone off me," Hermione said through shuddering breaths.

Harry discreetly left the kitchen to give them a moment.

"What are you talking about?" Ron said as he moved around the table, dragging his chair with him so he could sit, knee to knee with her.

"You…aren't…as…" Hermione was gulping in air between every word.

"Breathe," Ron said, sounding concerned.

"When I talk to you sometimes it's like you're not interested!"

"Talk about what? Filing? When have I ever been interested in filing? You never got upset about it before."

"About us and being with me and sometimes you don't even realise I'm in bed with you. You jump when I touch you, like you thought I'd snuck in while you were sleeping."

"That's not anything to do with you, that's silly dreams I wake up from or long days at work or side effects from product testing at the shop."

"But you're so distant!"

"Not that again. I'm right here, right now," Ron said as he took her hands, "and wondering why you were driving yourself insane trying to make a soup if this is what you were worried about."

"Because proper girlfriends cook for their boyfriends and I can't cook. That's why you left me before!"

Ron let his hands fall away from hers and he sat back in his chair.

He stared at her.

Hermione cringed and began shuffling closer to him until she was balanced on the edge of her chair.

"No, I know it wasn't your fault, I know it wasn't really about the food and me and Harry but I just remember that when it was getting to you the crappy food was what set you off and I was just trying to learn how to…"

Ron rose from his seat and looked down at her.

"I would _never_ leave you."

"I know!"

"You said I left you. I never left you."

"I know, it wasn't really you."

"What wasn't really me?" Ron snapped.

Harry stepped back into the room and cleared his throat.

"Ron?"

"She's talking like a nutter, Harry, have you heard her?"

"Ron?" Harry repeated.

"I'm saying it wrong," Hermione said as she grabbed at the front of Ron's t shirt.

"You're acting weird and it's my fault?"

"Get out, go and stand outside and cool down," Harry said, firmly.

"I'm being thrown out?" Ron shouted as if he was appealing to an invisible referee. "I'm getting cut and shouted at and called a bloody…whatever she's calling me and I'm the one who's got to go. What did I do?"

"Ron, just step away for a few minutes and then come back okay?" Harry said, calmly.

"The two of you are ganging up on me like I'm the arsehole. Why are you taking her side when you know she's talking cra-" Ron's face changed from wearing an expression of outrage to one of horrified realisation. "I did."

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, approaching his friend with concern.

"I did leave you."

"Yeah but that was different. That wasn't really your fault." Harry said.

"That's what I said," Hermione blurted, eyes swollen and red, "I know it wasn't you, not my Ron. I was just getting myself worked up and remembered how it got to you through your stomach first and I…I'm stupid."

Ron slumped against the sink and hugged his arms to himself.

"I didn't realise that was what you were talking about, sorry." Ron's voice was like an echo of itself.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked as he stepped forward.

Ron nodded and held up his hand.

"Maybe the blood loss. I wasn't thinking straight, sorry, s'all my fault."

"No," Hermione insisted, firmly, "I've been overreacting about little things you do and I should understand you're doing two jobs and not sleeping well and I can't expect your full attention like I used to have."

"But you do," Ron said, nodding, "I do give you my full attention. I don't always follow you right away but I'm slow like that."

"Oi!" Harry wagged a finger at him and warned him not to go down that road.

Ron sighed and Harry put his arm around Hermione's shoulders.

"This isn't anything to do with you," he said, "he's a bit vague with me too. I'll make him take some time off okay?"

"You'll _make_ me?" Ron said, shoulders rolling back and narrow chest puffing out.

"I'm back!" George called from the fireplace. "I bought some blood replenishin-" George stopped when he saw the looks on everybody's faces. "Did I mess it up? Are you all right?"

He rushed over to grab Ron's arm and examine his partially healed palm.

"It's fine," Ron said, sounding hollow and staring at Hermione, brow deeply furrowed.

"Ron's going to be taking some time off work with the Aurors," Harry said, "if you'd spare him a week at the shop it'd be really helpful."

George looked from Harry to Ron and then to Hermione. He didn't joke or tease but more importantly he didn't fuss.

"Get him out from under my feet for a week, it'd be like a holiday for me more than him," George shrugged before yanking Ron towards the table and pushing him into a sitting position, "Hold still and palm up."

Ron did as he was told and watched as George squirted some oily golden liquid onto the puffy pink diagonal line across his palm. George began massaging the oil into the partly formed scar with both thumbs.

Ron remained silent for about fifteen seconds before George spoke up.

"Go and see a Cannons game or something. Visit Ginny at Holyhead and train with all those feisty witches." George paused to glance at Hermione. "Or you could just stay in bed with your missus all week, exercise and relaxation all in one!"

The scar lifted and then slipped away from his skin like it was a wound made of soap being melted off by warm water.

"Did we try this on old partially healed wounds?" Ron asked his brother.

"No, why?" George frowned.

"I splinched myself ages ago and we never did do anything afterwards, just Hermione's dittany." Ron met Hermione's eyes and, through them, they managed to share a smile that their lips just weren't able to back up.

"Well, roll up your sleeve and we'll have a go." George said with a nod. "If it works then Bill's getting an early Christmas present and we're going to be rich."


	5. Third Person, omniscient

Third-person, omniscient

"Your friend Harry said you might need to talk to someone."

"Yeah," Ron mumbled, reluctantly.

"He told me that you've been very vague about some things, distant."

"I um...yeah."

"Would you like some hot chocolate?"

"What?" Ron blinked as he lifted his head at this unexpected question.

"Hot chocolate, would you like some or don't you know if you'd like some?"

"I would, I do, er, yes please." Ron stumbled over his words.

The special not-healer person waved to somebody across the large communal area and Ron turned to see who it was but the not-healer's voice brought him back into their corner of the space before he could deduce who the person was.

"Tell me about your job."

"Which one?"

"How many do you have?"

"Two. One with my brother and one with the Aurors."

"That's a heavy workload isn't it?"

"It's not bad," Ron said with a shrug, "the Auror stuff is just normal life and the shop is a proper job."

"Auror stuff is normal, day to day life?"

"For me, yeah."

"Ron, did you ever undergo any post traumatic stress treatment after the war ended?"

Ron shrugged and then shook his head.

"Is that a 'no' or an 'I don't know'?"

"It's a 'no', as in 'no I didn't', why?"

"Because an Auror's job is one of high stress, high pressure, and high anxiety. I can't imagine myself calling that state normal."

"What did you do during the war?"

"I hid." The not-healer was slightly defensive.

Most of the people who failed to understand how those who were in the thick of things could possibly resume a normal life were the very same people who were the farthest away from any danger. They would talk of survivor's guilt while the actual survivors just kept on doing what they always did, surviving.

"I didn't," Ron said, a dark edge to his voice.

Do-gooders came back out from under their rocks and tried to make all those troubled little nutcases feel better. Ron wasn't going to be anybody's project.

A large mug of hot chocolate arrived between them on the table and Ron glanced over to thank the waitress. He saw Hermione standing there, smiling at him, reassuringly. She moved away from them without a word.

"What? Where are you goin-"

"Ron, your friends are giving us some privacy but they're also here for you in case you want to stop talking to a stranger and start talking to them."

"I do talk to them!"

"You do, but when they talk to you they feel as if you're not quite following them sometimes."

Ron sat and sulked for a while before pulling the mug of hot chocolate towards him and slurping at the frothy top. If he could just get them off his back with a surly, 'you wouldn't understand' then he'd have done it right away. The thing was that _he _didn't understand either. Hermione always spelled stuff out to him and now she was asking questions he couldn't give her answers to.

"Tell me why you work for your brother as well as for the Aurors."

"The money's good," Ron said before taking anther noisy sip from the mug.

"Is that all?"

Ron wiped his top lip with the back of his hand and then gave a one shouldered shrug.

"It's called Weasley and Weasley, the company, and he needs another Weasley until he gets a missus or a kid or gets Lee to change his name." Ron snorted and smirked to himself.

"His twin died didn't he?"

"Yeah," Ron nodded and looked down into his mug.

"You were there when he died?"

"Um...yeah." Ron's eyes shifted to one side for a moment and then moved back to his drink.

"What time of day was it?"

"What?" Ron scowled, angrily.

"Did your brother die before or after you kissed your girlfriend for the first time?"

"_What?__"_ Ron's voice rose and his ears burned red.

"You don't have to answer that, not to me, but I want you to think and tell me if you know the answer."

Ron glared at the not-healer. She was being insensitive in order to break through the fog. There were better ways to coax an attempt to clear their air, though, and with a hot head like Ron she'd have to alter her approach.

"Ron," she said, calmly, "do you know this information?"

Ron looked to one side for a second, two seconds, three, and after an uncomfortably long time he looked back.

"Yes I do."

"That's good. Do you know why it took you so long to retrieve that information?"

Ron shook his head.

"Does that happen a lot?"

He nodded, cradling his warm mug with both hands.

"Any idea why?"

Again, a silent shake of the head.

Ron drank and the not-healer sat and watched him with a kind smile. Ron set the mug down, wiped his top lip once again, and sat back in his seat with arms folded across his chest.

"Go on then." He spoke the words as if they were a gauntlet being thrown down.

"Go on what?"

"You've got more questions. Go on."

"Very well. Do you use a Pensieve?"

Ron blinked and then frowned.

"We've got one. I mean Harry's got one."

"Do you use it?"

"I have done."

"Do you remember the last time you used it?"

Ron concentrated and then looked frustrated that he couldn't place the memory of the last time he'd cleared his head for a job or a test or just a peaceful night's sleep. The concept of telling a person not to think of an orange penguin and the person then being unable to prevent themselves from thinking of the brightly coloured creature is one most people are familiar with. Less familiar, however, is the concept of somebody asking us to recall the last time we thought of an orange penguin.

Ron was far away, getting lost on roads to nowhere in his mind, and he could probably have handled the question about the penguin a little better than the one he had been asked.

"When did you last play Quidditch?"

"Last month, that Tuesday night when it snowed," Ron answered without hesitation.

"When did you last cook a meal for yourself?"

"I cook for everybody when we're on a mission. Last Friday."

"When did you last think about You-Know-Who?"

"Uh...I...um..."

"Anything, Ron?"

Ron drummed his fingers on the table and thought hard.

"I'm sure I must have. I just don't...like to...y'know?"

"Think about your worst memory for me."

Ron's eyes moved as if he was searching for something.

"I don...I can't really...Well, Fred obviously."

"Are you saying that because it's true or because I already put Fred's death in your mind?"

"My brother being murdered is a very bad memory!"

"What about the locket on Christmas Day?"

Ron stared at her.

"Think about your best Christmas Day ever."

This exercise had been like stroking a cornered cat the wrong way, pushing its fur up and back rather than smoothing and soothing it. Ron's face flushed with anger again.

"Now think about the snow last month and being wet and cold with Harry during the Tri Wizard Tournament."

Ron suddenly looked frightened.

"Wait, how do you know that? I've never told anybody."

"Is it back? Do you have it?"

"How could he tell you about that?" Ron said with a devastated whisper as he leaned over the table towards her.

"Nobody told me what happened to you after you saved Harry from drowning. You remember now though don't you?"

Ron nodded, eyes burning.

* * *

"Well, I spoke to the professional Healers and the good news is, he hasn't been Obliviated."

Hermione heaved a sigh of great relief and clutched at Harry's hand. Harry was still rigid in his seat, however.

"He didn't do it to himself then?"

"I don't think so, no."

"What do you mean, do it to himself?" Hermione said as she shifted around in her seat to fix him with a fierce glare. "Ron wouldn't turn his wand on himself, especially not for something like that. He saw what happened to Lockhart. How could you think this was because of something he opted to do?"

"It was a valid option," the woman intervened.

"Not for Ron!" Hermione snapped.

"Hermione," Harry squeezed her hand and forced her to meet his eyes, "this was all his bad memories, all his pain, all of it gone. It could have been that he just wanted t-"

"Not all his unhappiness, our first kiss, Harry. He can't remember that either."

"It's connected with a lot of death, Hermione. It shares a timeline with the death of his brother."

Hermione shrank down in her chair and covered her mouth with her hand to muffle a sob.

"But he didn't do it," Harry said as he rubbed her back, "she just said. The memories are still there."

"So why can't he find them?" Hermione choked from behind her hand.

The figure of calm sat forward and began to try to explain.

"If I asked you to think of the bad times your mind will lead you down a direct route to them, like flooing you direct to your destination."

Harry nodded and Hermione sniffed and composed herself.

"You have immediate access to all the bad times if you purposefully look for them. But there are also times when you will hear a phrase or smell an aroma that takes you back to that memory too. There's a back road or a short cut. Maybe on your way somewhere else you'll pass it and be reminded."

"Is this why Ron suddenly remembers stuff out of the blue but when you directly reference it he can't place it?" Harry asked.

"That's it exactly, Harry. Something has taken all the easy access routes to his pain and left him with long, meandering, paths he has to wander in order to get to the memory."

"But everything's still there?" Hermione asked, with hope.

"Everything is still there," the woman nodded. "I read a lot about Pensieves when I first fund out that they existed, you know? I remember the chapter explaining to me that the memory itself wasn't removed at all. The person still can remember it, it's just not right there at the front of their mind."

"I wondered about that." Harry nodded and turned to Hermione. "Snape's worst memory was in the Pensieve when I saw it, it was out of his head, and yet when he dragged me out he was still angry and embarrassed about it. He could still remember it."

"But he was storing thoughts he didn't want you to see in there for your training." Hermione thought aloud. "So he was closing the roads and you wouldn't be able to find it by just invading his mind."

"I wouldn't be able to find it just like Ron can't find his own memories." Harry's face lit up at finally being able to understand what was wrong with his best friend.

Hermione bit her lip and turned back to the woman.

"So...So you think he poured all his nightmares and pain into a Pensive and then forgot he'd done it and it's out there somewhere? Harry we've got to find it for him!"

Harry's face was already falling, his elation crumpling into horrific realisation.

"His dreams." Was all Harry could say, voice hollow.

"What?" Hermione frowned.

"You told me that he's been having a reoccurring dream about..."

"S-pilling something," Hermione said, her heart falling in her chest and tears flooding her eyes.

"It's just a guess on my part," the woman said, sympathetically, "but I'd say he filled a Pensieve with everything that upset him and everything connected to it, and somehow the thing got knocked over."

"But there's a charm, there must be a charm to keep that from happening!" Harry said as he jumped up from his seat and ran his hands through his hair.

"It's your Pensieve," Hermione said, "did you ever put an unspillable charm on it?"

"No but I always thought...Oh God. He lost everything."

Hermione sagged and pressed her lips tightly against each other in an attempt to hold herself together. In the end her sigh won out and pushed its way through.

"I should have worked it out. Those dreams, he was always so upset and frantic...trying to mop it up."

Hermione began to cry and Harry stooped to comfort her but the older woman was there first and soothing her in a way only she could.

"Shhhh, it'll be all right. Now that we know what happened there might be something the Healers can do. Come on now darling."

Hermione clung back and sobbed painfully hard into the woman's cardigan.

"But it's not just those memories, he's so confused and can't find his way around his own mind any more. He didn't even recognise you, mummy."

Outside the door Ron was on his hands and knees, vomiting, the sound of Hermione crying with such anguish leading him down a dark path that led straight to Malfoy Mannor.


	6. Universal omniscient

Universal omniscient

In the future, when Ron looked back on this, he would play down how crushing it was for everybody to know the worst of him before he could recall it to the front of his mind.

He'd be able to explain it to people. He would even be called upon to sit with others who had shared the rare misfortune of losing their own map of the mind. He always remembered something off by heart, his mother-in-law's reassurance that he wasn't as lost as the magical professionals had first told him.

"How are you with directions, Ron?" His future mother-in-law asked.

"Not bad," Ron said with a shrug.

"You've been to our house haven't you? Direct me from our house to the Leaky Cauldron."

"I've...been to your house," Ron said, looking at the woman as if waiting for her to slap herself on the forehead and admit she had been confusing him for somebody else.

She looked at him and gave a patient nod. He then took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. It was a dining room chair. It wasn't the one that wobbled when you sat back in it, thank goodness, that was annoying. It wouldn't be repaired until he inherited it years later. He may have grown up in a wonky house but that didn't mean that wonky furniture didn't annoy him.

"Did you bring this chair from home?" Ron frowned as he twisted in his seat and looked at it with a crinkled brow.

"I did," she grinned at him and he looked up at her and then paled.

"Oh God," he said as he put his hand to his chest, eyes wide, "Hermione's mum! I've been blanking you for days!"

She laughed.

"Yes you have," she said with a nod, "and what a joy it has been."

"What?" Ron was changing from white to pink and he was about to take part in one of Jean Granger's favourite family stories.

"Well I thought you were a lovely young man, you were such a sweet little boy, and you never proved me wrong but meeting you as a stranger really let me know I was right. You didn't need to impress me or win me over, you were being yourself and you are still the same jittery thing with the heart of gold who thought I would slap your face when we met again after returning from Australia."

"You should have said," Ron was almost accusing with this statement, "I would have found you if you'd told me to look."

"But I know what being an Auror means to you, Ron."

Ron felt more lost than ever.

"Is it worth me saying huh?" He shrugged and she reached over and patted the back of his hand with affection.

"If you need me to remind you where you know me then what about running into a Death Eater on an undercover mission? You could bump into a mortal enemy and treat him like a passing acquaintance. We need to map everything out before the Aurors do any tests on you to make sure you are still fit for duty."

He sighed, deeply.

"I never thought about losing my job."

"Which one?"

Ron lifted his eyes to meet hers, head still hanging despondently.

"Being an Auror is my job. I just...George needs more time. He hasn't been alone in his whole life."

She swelled before him. She was proud of him for that. When he was getting hysterical at the birth of his first child she would re-tell this story and assure him that he had something ingrained into him that made him a wonderful father.

"You connected with the chair for some reason and through that, found me. You aren't lost forever, Ron. you just need to draw a new map."

"I'm not your daughter, please dumb it down a bit."

The look she gave him made him flinch. It was like looking at Hermione through an ageing mirror, though Hermione's hair only grew wilder with age whereas her mother's tamed over the years.

"Are you going to shove me?" He asked, bracing himself.

"Hermione doesn't put up with that and neither will I!" Jean Granger said, sternly.

"What's a dentist doing this for anyway?" Ron decided he may as well throw all his two footed comments into the conversation at one and get them over with.

"You know the answer to that. I'll wait until you find it. So back to my point," she said after drumming her fingers on the desk, "give me directions from my house to the Leaky Cauldron."

"You come out of your front door and turn left. Walk to the end of the street and get the bus to Hounslow Central tube station."

"What bus?"

"Only one route runs by the end of your street, just get on the bus," Ron said, plainly.

"Good, go on."

"Tube it into town and...you know the way Mrs Granger, what the point of this?"

"The point is that those directions in your brain are gone but you do have something left, in theory. My theories are rarely wrong."

"Her mother's daughter, totally," Ron muttered to himself as he shook his head.

"You are stepping out of my front door," she said, ignoring his utterance as she would have to do many more times in the future, "you're standing on my doorstep. Close your eyes and picture it."

He did as he was told, something ingrained in him from years of being ordered around by a Granger woman.

"Now point in the direction of the Leaky Cauldron."

Ron lifted his right arm and pointed out to his side.

"This is how we're going to draw your new map," she said, touching his face to encourage him to open his eyes.

This unsettled Ron as it was so familiar. Her touch was just like Hermione's. Of all the things he went on to share with her in the future, the fact that he was turned on by his mother in law would never be one of them. Ironic really. That was a post spill memory so he was never able to lose track of it. Nearly leaning in to kiss your girlfriend's mum really does sink its hooks into a man's brain.

"Ron?"

"Yuh," he said, pausing to swallow, "I'm listening, Mrs Granger."

"You knew where you needed to go as the crow flies," she said, pausing to wait for his nod of comprehension, "but you can't give directions if called upon to do so out of the blue. Death Eaters won't come at you with something to jog your memory."

He nodded and exhaled, deeply.

"Did being a clumsy git just ruin my life?"

"Not in any way, and…" Ron cowered as he was swatted about the head.

"Do you teach your daughters that as a rite of passage or something?" Ron grumbled as he rubbed the back of his head.

"We don't stand for remarkable men putting themselves down." She was blunt and unapologetic, she was so very Hermione. "So, back to as the crow flies thinking."

"Think like a crow," Ron said with a determined nod.

"You don't have your directions but you can still point, vaguely, in the right direction. We just need to map you out a new path."

"I dunno, I lost a lot of stuff." Ron's shoulders fell and he was looking for the same reassurance Hermione gave him at times like these.

"You lost nothing. It's still there and you still know how to find it but you're so resigned to failure that you're not bothering to trust yourself and head in the right direction."

"I know everything's still there," Ron said as he began to pout. "knowing which way to point at it isn't going to help me."

Jean looked at him with sympathy for a moment before pressing her lips together and looking focused. Ron chuckled and gave a mock shudder.

"You really are just like Hermione, y'know."

"I think you'll find she is the one who is like me," she said with a smug look as she reached down into her large leather handbag.

Ron leaned around to see what she was pulling out and recognised the distinctive yellow folder of an Auror records file.

"Where did you get that?" He gasped.

"Harry helped me, we're not going to get into trouble, don't worry."

Ron glanced around the room, uneasily. He didn't know that the file Harry had chosen for this exercise was full of photographs of witches and wizards he himself had arrested and secured convictions for.

"So," she began as she tapped the bundle of photographs against the table and straightened them in a business-like fashion, "I'm going to show you a picture of a wizard and I want you to tell me if he's a suspect, a witness or a victim. All right?"

Ron nodded and wrung his hands, elbows on the table and shoulders hunched, with intense concentration. Jean showed him the first photograph. It was of a man called Terry Deeble who had every stolen magical object pass through his hands at one point or another. If you wanted it then Deeble could get it for you.

"Who's this?"

Ron looked at the photo and focused hard on the man's face.

"You're trying to remember the directions, Ron," Jean said, as if she was pointing out that his sleeve was dipping into his gravy at dinner. "What direction are the faces from work stored?"

Ron took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair, roughly.

"Work stuff is…well I have an organised chaos on my desk and in my filing cabinet and in my locker. Hermione wants me to tidy all the time but if I tidied I'd never be able to find anything properly."

"Kind of like your head?" Jean smiled.

Ron blinked and then looked at the photo.

"Witnesses and informants are spellotaped to the underside of my desk drawer, the middle one, and he's not there."

Jean handed him the bundle of photographs. Ron took them and flipped through them, scanning each face until he did a double take at the sight of Lillian Baird.

"Baird, she was an informant but she was a turncoat too. She testified against innocent people and was a plant for this bloke…" Ron then paused and picked up a photo he'd already passed by without recognition. "_This_bloke! He's James Huddleston. I arrested him, he's been put away with Baird."

And that was it for Ron, he was in the right part of his memory and everything clicked inside his head.

"I've arrested all of these people!"

"Yes you have." Jean grinned and nodded.

"Stoneway, Maxwell, Roux, Lambert, Corrina and Tristan Kuzui," he tossed away each photo as he named the person pictured, "and this one is Gair."

Ron shook his head and then picked up the first photograph again.

"How could I blank on Deeble?"

"Don't worry about that, Ron," Jean said, happily, "do you realise that you know how to get to the work compartment of your mind now?"

Ron looked up and cocked his head to one side.

"I do?"

"You need to get into a work frame of mind so you think about what you have on your desk, in your desk, where you'd file something in your deranged filing system, and what you have in your messy locker."

"I do." Ron said with pleasant surprise.

"You're desk is like your mind. You know where to find everything but you get lost if somebody comes in and tidies it up. Somebody has tidied and you're a little thrown but you still have those files spellotaped to the bottom of your drawer."

Ron nodded, slowly.

"Is this a metaphor or are you literally…"

"Whatever you need it to be. It works, that's all that matters. You can retrain your brain to flick on that switch that lays it all out in your messy way where you know where to find everything when you need it."

"But what about if I'm out in public on my day off with my family and I see a face I shouldn't trust but I don't have the switch turned on so I d-"

"Ron," Jean said, calmly, "it's been five minutes. You aren't a master of it yet but that's because it's only been five minutes. Honestly, you're as bad as Hermione."

After a moment of stunned silence they both started giggling.

Most men didn't enjoy the company of their mother-in-law but Ron would be different. He and Jean would jokingly flirt with each other until Hermione had to leave the room in flustered embarrassment. But then again, most men didn't have their whole mind mapped out by their future mother-in-law either.

By their third session together Ron had remembered that Jean had originally wanted to be a psychiatrist and had studied at university towards that career. He asked her why she chose to be a dentist instead.

"Honestly?" She said with a cheeky smile. "I really wanted one of those fantastic chairs!"


	7. Third Person, limited

Warning for sex scene (not like the ones I write elsewhere but for this site it's a bit raunchy)

Third-person, limited

She began to worry that her paranoia would drive Ron away.

When he was struggling to find his own memories she'd been convinced he was going off her. His coolness when he would ordinarily have been affectionate with her was hard to deal with as Ron had never been a passionless person. What she had never been expecting, after the revelation about the accident with the Pensieve of course, was the feeling of jealousy she was experiencing about the closeness between Ron and her mother.

Yes it was wonderful that she was helping him. Her mother was the only person who read more than Hermione and magical textbooks were quite a passion now. Ron was somebody she thought she knew better than herself and yet she wasn't able to talk him through his confusion in the same way her mother could.

One thing had made her feel needed, though, and that was the fact that Ron was still jumping awake at night in a frantic state as he remembered the moment of the spill.

"It's okay," she said as she pulled him back on to the bed and held him to her, "I'm here. You're okay."

Ron was damp with sweat and his heart was thumping against his chest. Hermione would occasionally jerk awake just as she was dropping off to sleep and feel her adrenaline kick in with the shock of it. Sometimes she'd feel as if she was falling and have to calm her nerves before she could settle back down to sleep. This was, she assumed, what it must be like for Ron when he jolted awake at her side.

She felt Ron pulling away and tightened her grip on him.

"It's all still there," she whispered, "you didn't lose it. You're still my Ron and I'm still your Hermione."

He nodded, breathing heavily into her hair, before pulling back and prying her arms away at the same time.

"I know, I'm fine," he said, appearing to attempt a reassuring smile as he spoke but it looked to her like a plea to give him a moment to compose himself.

"Shall I fetch you something to drink?" She offered, giving him a reason to ask her to leave without worrying about hurt feelings.

"No, go back to sleep," he said as he pulled the sheet back.

As she reached over to yank the thin cotton back over his body she froze when she noticed how low Ron's frayed pyjama bottoms had slipped in his sleep. They were beneath his protruding hipbones and his ankles were also exposed. She ran her hand down the faded stripy fabric which clung to his thigh and then crumpled at the knee..

"Hermione?" Ron frowned at her as he relaxed back onto the bed, propping himself up on both elbows.

"You can't still be growing, and these are new," she said as she plucked at the soft material, "so why are they so small on you?"

Ron smiled at her and rubbed his toe against her bare foot.

"I shrink stuff in the wash," he said with a mischievous mumble.

"Deliberately?"

"No," he looked into her eyes and then began to play with her fingers with his own in the small space between them on the bed, "but I know you like stuff washed in your Muggle machine rather than magically and…well, I haven't got it to stop shrinking stuff yet."

She laughed softly at this and then ran her hand across the hollow of his belly. The skin was smooth and pale, almost glowing in the light of the moon that flooded through the window, apart from a few wiry amber hairs creeping up from the waistband of his pyjamas.

"I uh," Ron was distracted by the movement of her hand against his body, "I don't have much luck with liquids do I?"

He smiled, nervously and then swallowed. Hermione rolled towards him and threw a leg over his body to straddle him. She leaned down and kissed his lips.

"You still want that glass of water?" She purred as she trailed kisses along his neck. "I can supervise it all the way into your mouth if you want."

"Yeah," Ron said, croaking, dryly. "I'll get it."

He tried to sit up but Hermione pushed him back down, both hands flat against his bare chest.

"I'll go," she said, forcefully, "you just lie here and wait for me, just like this."

Ron nodded and watched her as she climbed off him and padded towards the doorway. She paused to wave before she left and made her way to the kitchen. She'd been combing her mother's psychology books in her spare time, desperate to understand why the loss of Ron's worst times in the Pensieve spill. She knew that part of the problem, his distraction and turning away from her when she tried to comfort him or be intimate with him, was due to him being lost in a part of his head where clearly marked out roads used to be.

She still hated that something between them was different because of the accident, though.

As she dwelled on the impact of one little spill she felt the cold water flowing over the rim of the glass and pouring across her fingers. The slippery glass slipped from her grasp and smashed in the sink. She hissed a swear word she had learned from Ron under her breath and then realised that she'd left her wand in the bedroom so set about picking the jagged shards out with her fingers.

She gathered the fractured pieces and thought about setting them to one side to magically repair in the morning.

But somethings can't be fixed just the way they were. In some cases you had to cry over the spilt milk because you couldn't unspill it. Even in the first year she had been taught that magic couldn't solve everything. There was no way to unboil an egg, not even with a wand. Death conquered all and a magically severed body part couldn't be reattached.

There were things she was going to have to live with now, things that couldn't go back the way they were, and she decided to throw the pieces of broken glass away. They could still get along quite happily with things that weren't repaired with magic. It wasn't going to be the same. Glasses would have to be thrown away and pyjamas would shrink, but Ron would find his way again and be happy.

She grabbed another glass and filled it. As she made her way through to the bedroom she heard the light but unmistakable snores of her boyfriend. She paused in the doorway and sighed. He was sprawled across the bed, sheets flung away, with his arms and legs wide apart like a human starfish. One arm hung over the side of the mattress and both his feet were pointing down like ballet dancer's feet. He was an elegant mess.

He snored again.

She set the glass of water on the beside table and crouched at the side of the bed to look at him. He was pouting in his sleep.

"I love you," she whispered as she stroked his hair back from his closed eyes.

"Mmm?" Ron's face crinkled and then became peaceful once again. One of his sprawled arms flopped back and slapped himself on the stomach.

She smiled to herself, leaned over, and kissed his protuberant bottom lip. Ron made a dopey chuckling sound and lay there with a half laugh kind of expression on his face. She found a spot, beneath his arm and tucked into the side of his body, for herself to sleep and curled up into a tight ball.

Maybe some clothes shrinkage due to Muggle techniques wasn't that bad, she thought as she drifted off, she did like Ron's jeans to be tight around the rump after all. She chuckled to herself, sleepily, and felt a little better. Ron would find his way back to her the long way round, and after a journey like that he was always frisky.

She stroked his skin with her big toe, just as he had done earlier, and fell asleep to dreams of being ravished by her knight in tight, shrunken armour.

* * *

When she woke she was alone. The sheet was draped over her and as she angled her head to look at the clock on the bedside table she saw that the glass was now empty. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes before yawning.

"Ron?"

She slid off the bed and leaned out through the bedroom doorway. The shower was running and she turned to wander back into the bedroom and grab her dressing gown. She stooped to pick up Ron's pyjamas from the floor and smiled to herself. She pulled off her floral patterned nightie. The sound from the bathroom stopped and she folded up the nightie and Ron's pajama bottom's, neatly, and set them on the foot of the bed. She stepped into her fuzzy pair of lilac slippers and tied the belt of her dressing gown around her waist. The bathroom door creaked open and she set off to brush her teeth.

Ron was standing in the hallway, roughly rubbing at his wet hair with a towel, and wearing a much too small one around his waist. Hermione gasped and Ron rolled his eyes and chuckled.

"I didn't shrink the towel," he said, "I'm just tall."

Hermione's mouth was hanging open and when Ron finally stopped looking amused and tilted his head to one side to look at her, quizzically, she snapped out of it and clamped it shut.

"You…" Ron began before swallowing whatever he was going to say back down again. "Morning sexy."

She looked down at herself in her peach dressing gown, lilac fuzzy slippers and unshaved legs, and then back up at Ron.

"Very funny."

Ron dropped his towel.

Hermione's eyes went directly to the focal point of his anatomy. It was pointing at her.

"Where were you last night?" She asked it.

Ron cleared his throat and stepped towards her.

"Sorry I fell asleep."

"That's okay," Hermione said, still distracted by what was bobbing between them.

"You don't still think I've lost you too do you?" He asked her as he tugged lightly at one of the dangling belt tassels of her dressing gown. "'Cause I never took you out of my head in the first place. Why would I take out the best thing in my life?"

She lunged forward and crushed her tightly closed lips to his mouth and then pulled away to beam up at him.

"Well I remember kissing you being better than that!" Ron teased.

"I haven't brushed my teeth yet," she said as she covered her mouth with her hand.

Ron pulled her hand away and held her other arm at her side about the wrist as he leaned down to kiss her properly. His fresh tasting mouth and minty clean tongue overwhelmed her and she was soon melting into a deep two way snog. Ron was naked and she was in her most frumpy combination of clothing but she didn't feel unwanted, not at all.

Ron tugged the loose knot in her belt and then opened her dressing gown. He pushed it over her smooth shoulders and it slipped down to the floor to join his damp towel.

"I haven't shaved my legs," Hermione protested while hopping up and wrapping the offending legs around Ron's waist.

"Doesn't matter," Ron said as he supported her weight by gripping her buttocks with both hands and pausing to kiss her, "neither have I."

She giggled into his mouth and he pressed her against the bathroom wall as he lowered her down and moved his hips until they both moaned and held still with their eyes closed. They were just standing and breathing for a moment until Hermione bit her lip and gripped a handful of Ron's dripping wet hair as she tightened her muscles around him.

Ron's face buried into her neck and he growled against her skin.

"I remember the first time I was inside you." Ron's voice was rich and deep, if melting chocolate could talk it would sound like this.

"Mmmm-hmmmm," Hermione loosened her muscles and slid down until Ron was buried to the hilt. "I remember when you first found out that I used to touch myself thinking of you."

"Oh God!" Ron gasped and panted heavily as he staggered away from the wall and carried her into the shower. There were two slaps along the way as her slippers fell to the floor and she reached blindly to turn on the shower.

The warm water rained down on them and Hermione's hair grew sleek and weighty around her shoulders and down her back.

"Tell me what else you remember about us," she said as fat droplets of water hung and then broke away from her glossy lips.

"The first ever time I touched your boob was by accident, but you made this noise like you really liked it so I lifted it and squeezed it, and you put your hand under my jumper and snogged me until I got dizzy."

Hermione felt Ron thrusting up into her and growled, breathlessly into his ear.

"Touch me there now!"

Ron grunted as he pushed her up and against the slippery wall of the shower and then nuzzled between her wet bosoms before licking and tugging at one of her nipples.

"More!" Hermione demanded.

Ron supported her weight with one arm now as he cupped one of her breasts and then closed his hand around it, taking the weight of the flesh and massaging it like he was manipulating a piece of wet clay into a perfect sphere.

"Fuck," Ron gasped as he sank to his knees and then began grinding his hips up into Hermione as her full body weight pressed down onto his lap.

"I never told you how I used to take your seat when you left it to feel your warmth and that I'd hug a cushion you'd crushed with all your fidgeting and sink my nose into it to smell you did I?"

Ron opened his mouth, swallowed and then gasped as she began riding him to climax. Water droplets bounced off his face and ran in rivulets across his skin. She gripped his biceps, lean modest muscles that bulged beneath her fingers, and pinned him to the floor of the shower while rocking her hips with increasing pace and a pounding rhythm.

"I could never tell you," she said, thrusting with every word before gabbling the rest almost hysterically, "I loved that your clothes didn't fit. Skin and hipbones and stomach…so…tormenting. And…when…you'd…yaaaaawn!"

She felt Ron coming inside her and arched her back, threw back her head and clenched her teeth.

It was hard to imagine a time when the most erotic thing she thought Ron could do was a full body yawn which caused his t shirt to ride up and pyjama bottoms to slip down.

"Thank God your mum doesn't have to help me map out these memories," Ron said, in a daze.

* * *

_A/N Because this is the narrative style I write most of my fic in anyway I decided to give you some sex to make it extra special! _


	8. Unreliable

Unreliable

Nobody thought about how this had all come to be in the first place. All they wanted was for everything to be as it was once more.

But everything couldn't have been that great if Ron Weasley was pouring half his mind into a Pensieve on a regular basis.

Yet again, all that mattered was that people lived their lives slotted into the designated pigeon hole Harry Potter had fashioned for them. His best friend was so unhappy he couldn't cope with all the darkness and trauma Potter had brought into his life. His brother had practically died in his arms and despite all his sacrifices he was the nobody who just tagged along and let the hero do all the work while he shared some of the credit.

For a person to have suffered such noticeable memory problems from the removal of memories into a Pensieve, something designed to ease troubled minds rather than create them, the volume of his mind that was removed had to have been considerable.

So what did Harry Potter do to an affable young pure blood boy that caused him to feel compelled to dump a large portion of who he was in order to live with himself?

Every source so far only had one comment to make, no comment, except for the austere trainee spinster for life who goes by the name Hermione Granger. The controlling harridan loved to fall back on her, less than the goody-two-shoes image she would have people believe, fondness for threats and blackmail in order to protect herself and her master from the truth.

And what was the truth?

Could the truth be that a good natured boy who was always the first with a smile and a joke ended up a tormented soul who had to keep secrets that made his friends look a little less than the perfect version of the story reported in the Quibbler?

A curious choice of publication, some thought. The most unreliable source for facts had been taken as gospel for its reports on Harry Potter. When it claimed a new magical creature had been discovered did readers see it in the school books the following year? Did they find it in magical encyclopaedias? Was it considered a valid zoological discovery? Or did they laugh that, yet again, the Lovegoods had made up yet another work of fiction and reported it as fact.

They told the public every detail of the great quest only omit huge portions of Ronald Weasley's involvement. Even members of his own family had no clue where he was for the weeks he appears to be absent in the story. There was a detailed report on Weasley's lifesaving heroics at the moment of his comeback. Where did he comeback from? Why did he go? For what reason couldn't he find his 'friends' to rejoin them? None of that information was reported.

Weasley plunged into the icy depths to rescue the saviour of the world. Then the world was informed that he vanquished an attack from part of You-Know-Who's soul in the form of destroying a locket horcrux. When Miss Granger was tortured for information that she didn't give up the public heard every detail of what she had to endure. When the immortal Potter faced death and then returned the world was given every detail of the miracle in the forest.

Ask exactly what Ronald Weasley had to suffer to play his part and suddenly privacy was the word of the day.

Did Weasley let himself, his family, his friends down? Did he do more than he was given credit for and had to be silenced so as not to overshadow the chosen one? Did Ronald Weasley have a breakdown that was covered up by the two people who sent him away and left him wandering a bitterly cold landscape trying to find them again?

Neglect, brainwashing and manipulation - not words that any admirer of Potter would like to hear associated with their idol but words they would have to come to live with.

A diary that was transformed into a horcrux had the power to enchant, and for that read Potter protectors spin doctoring the word 'possess', young witch Ginervra Weasley. It could be that pure bloods had less resistance to the negative magic of the Dark Lord than half bloods or Muggle borns. If some of the witches and wizards who filed appeals against their convictions after the war were to be believed, yes.

Multiple claims that they, being pure blooded, couldn't overcome such old magic must have carried some truth. There was plenty of smoke and Kingsley Shacklebolt sat at his desk, polishing the framed photograph of himself and Harry Potter, denying there was any such thing as fire.

What if Ronald Weasley, the hero who had no story to tell, suffered all means of dark possession during his unreported time that bleak winter?

While the saintly Potter and his pious friend Granger claimed to have endured all the suffering, they also went out of their way to keep a tight ring of secrecy around their third wheel.

Why, if he contributed nothing other than a single act as a lifeguard, was he to be shielded? Why, if this was just a simple matter of an accident with a Pensieve, was Weasley on a leave of absence from both his jobs? Most of all, why did a twenty year old man so desperately need to flood a Pensieve with his thoughts in order to live with himself?

Either Mr Weasley was a danger to society and should not be encouraged to rediscover those dark and treacherous places within his psyche or he was the innocent victim of brutal manipulation by a cruel and powerful dark wizard.

Lord Voldemort might be gone but Harry Potter was not.

Maybe this was why Ronald Weasley couldn't get a good night's sleep.

"What are you doing in here?" Ron asked as he wandered into his office and discovered Rita Skeeter sitting at his desk watching her quick quotes quill dancing over a roll of parchment.

Rita slid the chair back from the desk and crossed her long, elegant legs.

"I could ask you the same thing, Ronnie," Rita said, flirtatiously, "aren't you supposed to be in a Muggle facility?"

"Your imagination's as vivid as ever," Ron replied, clearly still suffering from serious confusion and mind manipulation.

Rita swivelled the chair around and slipped out of it with the grace of a ballroom dancer in the prime of her youth. She moved around the desk and pulled the framed photograph of the plain Jane Muggleborn face down as she passed.

"Why don't you pop yourself up here and give me a tour of your newly mapped memory?" she patted the corner of the desk and smiled, seductively.

"Well we could go to the newly refurbished, illegal animagus' who I could arrest without trial wing." Ron said as he approached, clinging to the only power he had over her overwhelming sexuality. "There's new carpet down, it's royal blue to match your varicose veins."

Rita felt a cold fury swelling inside her until it bubbled to boiling point and she pushed the flattened photograph of the Granger hag off the desk and onto the floor.

"You poor thing," she seethed, "what have those twisted people you call friends done to you?"

Ron sighed and folded his arms. He wasn't a young man with an impressive build but he did have that lean, fit physique that only the young seem to have. He could almost be handsome if the right woman were to take him in hand. Rita felt a smile of confidence and appreciation pull her mouth wide and she moved with cat like elegance towards him.

"Unless you want to be swatted by a rolled up newspaper like the insect you are I suggest you keep creaking that dodgy hip of yours out the door and the building."

Rita ignored the slight. The poor brainwashed fool needed the real facts to be re-implanted into his suggestible head.

"You believe whatever they tell you don't you?" She purred as she dragged her hand down his chest and draped another arm around his shoulders. "What did they tell you to believe about your time away from them? Why you were gone and why you came back?" She gazed up at him as her fingers began unbuttoning his shirt. "Did Voldemort's locket creep inside your head and whisper to you?"

She rose up onto her toes and spoke into his ear, which was burning red with the burden of resisting her, while she pressed her hand against his chest.

"Get your claw off me," Ron growled with passion as he lifted her hands away before he lost his resolve and ravished her.

Rita giggled against his earlobe and then moved her hands to slide through his hair, combing through the fiery locks with her slender fingers and perfectly manicured nails.

"Or was it the voices of your friends? Did they plant their vile lies deep inside when you were so fragile and lost?" Rita soothed his troubled soul and tingled as he grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall. "That's it Ronnie, take me!"

"Fuck off and leave me alone you loopy old bat!" Ron yelled, obviously unable to overcome his disturbed mental state and let himself open up to her like a flower to a queen bee.

"Or did you like it? Do you remember that?" She looked over the rims of her glasses at him and revelled in him fighting the urge not to kiss her.

"You're lucky I don't hit women. Now get out."

He spun her around and marched her towards the door.

"Haven't you asked yourself why they aren't respecting your wishes?" Rita threw at him over her shoulder as she was forcibly removed.

"I'm asking myself why you aren't respecting them by crawling into a hole in the ground and dying."

Rita twisted out of his grip and stood before him with admirable defiance.

"You wanted to rid yourself of some pain, pain they caused you, and possibly some guilt that the two of them conspire to use against you to keep you down. They like you beneath them don't they? You, the one with the great mind and the respected ancestry. You needed to remove the sensitive spots they prod in order to keep you where you belong…their whipping boy."

He looked at her.

"I only lost one member of my family because of them, just one of nine of us, they are above me. They're above me and you and everybody," his eyes were wide, like he was possessed not by a part of Voldemort but by his own friends, leaving him with no control over his opinions no matter how reasoned and intelligently put forth her theories were. "And if my place is at their feet then I know my place and I'm happy there. I'm happy there because you're not there. You don't belong anywhere near their feet because your ugly mouth isn't fit to be anywhere near them. You're not good enough to lick the shit from their shoes!"

"You were unhappy enough to want to drag them out of your head and they're asking you, no forcing you, to seek them out and feel that pain, that torment and humiliation, that worthlessness all over again because _that's _how they like you, worthless!"

"I still feel everything I lost that day," Ron said as he escorted her through the door and into the hallway, "only since I lost my way I feel it when I'm not ready to handle it. They're helping me find my way so I can avoid it. You want a quote for your rag? Here's your quote; my lifeboat sprung a leak but I had two strong swimmers to keep my head above water."

He leaned in close to Rita's face.

"And they'll keep holding me up even when sharks like you start circling."

The door slammed and Rita knew that his confusion and trauma were too much for her to break through directly. She checked the coast was clear and then transformed into her Animagus form.

Just as she began to crawl under the door she heard footsteps running down the hallway.

"That bitch had better not have gone in there," Harry Potter was growling to himself.

Rita was concealed beneath the door as he skidded to a halt. She'd scuttle out of the way and listen in, she thought, as sharp witted as ever. The knob turned, Potter called out his friend's name, and the wooden door swung open.

"Ron, watch your back mate, that bitch Skeeter-"

She didn't get to hear the rest.

The last thing to pass through Rita Skeeter's mind was her own antennae as Harry Potter's shoe crunched down on something in his haste to tell Ron what was best for him.

* * *

_A/N Thanks to Eckles for give me the inspiration to look at this from a more critical side which really helped with writing in the unreliable narrative style._


	9. Epistolary

Epistolary

_Ron Weasley_

_Flat 21B Ripple Road_

_London Borough of Diagon_

_M491C_

Hi Hermione,

So the pile of boxes are now only three high and two deep!

There you were thinking you would move in and it'd be as messy as you left it. Have faith in me, woman.

I know I said I'd write back more often but my letters are crap and Ginny tells you all the family news, Harry gives you the Harry news and the Harry news is pretty much the me news so I'd only be repeating myself really. How annoying would that be?

In fact I think you should be thanking me for not bothering you.

But I'm writing because your last letter sounded kind of like you do when you have a crinkly bit at the top of your nose and you look all clenched as if you've been jammed into too tight clothes (and while I know you like that look on me I also know how you like a nice baggy jumper for yourself).

I know you're worried that you have become the evil overlord of the house elves but you have to remember that the reason they are so empowered is because of you. One day they'll have to get along without you and they'll be ready for that day because of all your hard work. The thing is you'll have to get ready for them not needing you anymore and I know that'll be painful for you.

I dug out a dictionary for this (and a book called a thesaurus, which I thought was about dinosaurs until Harry laughed at me and explained) so you'd better appreciate it.

What you should keep telling yourself is that you will always be needed. Your guidance is invaluable. Your morals and ethics and amazing forbearance in the face of my needy idiocy and self destructive tendencies are essential for the ongoing reconstruction of my psyche.

Basically, in a nutshell that has no books that sound like dinosaurs, I'll never stop needing you.

I hope that makes you feel better. If it doesn't I hope that it at least crinkles the sides of your mouth into a smile rather than crinkles your nose and forehead even deeper.

So, anyway, you asked how I was doing with the big move.

I keep bracing myself to freak out about it. Everybody keeps telling me what a big step it is and Mum practically has us married already. George keeps popping out from behind boxes and talking as if I'll be living in fear my whole life from now on. That was only funny when Angelina heard him and told him she wouldn't be staying overnight at the shop any more so he could snuggle with his hot water bottle instead of his big scary girlfriend from now on.

I slept in the bed for the first time last night. It's great, and big enough for me to sprawl out all over it, but it's not quite right without you nudging me to give you some more room. The curtains came and your mum put them up and they were hideous..

We have curtains with yellow roses on.

I know.

I'll take them down and put up some simple cream coloured ones. I just want to find a spell I think I can tweak that will project the yellow roses onto it when she comes to visit so her feelings don't get hurt and we don't have to live with ugly flowers.

I love your mother but I really don't want to live in a bowl of potpourri any more than you do.

Speaking of my lovely mistress, Jean, while she fiddled with the hem of the curtains we talked through some little things and I found some little bad times from when I was a kid and Fred bullied me.

She reckons that I put them away because I felt guilty for having memories of Fred being an arsehole to me.

The funny thing was that getting them back made it sort of better. I also found some stuff I'd forgotten, so didn't think to remove, and I wanted to tell you about it.

When we were still too young to go to Hogwarts and Fred was taller than me, so really young if you think about it, he had an argument with George and mum separated them. She physically separated them. George was sent to Nana Prewett's house and Fred was going to go to Auntie Muriel's. Mum said she'd had enough and they were the reason dad was going bald.

When George went away Fred was all defiant and gitty in his Fred-like way just to show mum that nothing could stop him. He went to Muriel's and got sent back within the day after causing havoc and he was really smug about it. He said the George was going to do the same at Nana's and they'd be back together creating more mischief by bedtime.

But George was a pretty well behaved kid when Fred wasn't around to egg him on, especially back then. He was a good boy for Nana and she didn't send him back that night. She had him for the whole weekend and on the following Monday an owl came from George asking if he could stay for a couple more days.

She was teaching him to make this paste that burned without singeing anything or giving off heat. It's what they use for their wet start fireworks now, safe for kids y'know? Anyway, he was enjoying himself and Fred was getting lonely and taking it out on me.

I avoided him after mum left us to read, we did reading aloud and then finished our stories quietly while she made dinner, and he followed me and tried to annoy me. I hid from him again and he found me and threw something hard at the back of my head. I was really cross with him and told him he was horrible without George.

I threw my book at him, I remember that so clearly now, and he let it hit his shoulder and he didn't do anything. He didn't beat me up or threaten revenge or anything nasty like that. He looked at me and said he was sorry.

Fred never said sorry, not to me, not unless mum made him, but that time he did.

He wasn't doing anything to show he was upset. He didn't cry or sulk. He just stood there.

He was bigger than me so I dragged a fallen branch over to him and stood on it, then I gave him a cuddle. Me and the twins didn't cuddle. Fred and George aren't cuddly people. I gave him a cuddle and he cuddled back and after that neither of us spoke of it again. It was so against everything I thought about Fred that I put it away like a crazy dream and not a real memory.

But it happened. I cuddled him and he said he was sorry to me.

I would never have remembered that if this mess hadn't happened.

I didn't tell your mum when it came back to me, just that something had. I wanted to share it with you. I really wanted to write it down actually. I don't like that I forgot it, or didn't believe it really happened, so I wanted to make it real by getting it out of my head (we both know how unreliable my head can be eh?) and making it something I can hold and not spill.

Does that make sense?

I wrote something else down too. I wrote every humiliating detail in full. I burnt it straight after. I feel better for making it a physical thing outside of myself though.

I think I'm ready to tell you.

Not in a letter though, not this.

One thing your mum seems to know not to ask me to look for or describe has been re-plotted on the new and improved map of my mind and it's time to get it out of my head.

When you come home I want to tell you about destroying the locket.

Until then I'll paint all the yellowy beige ceilings white and wait for you to be overthrown by your ungrateful elf friends (joking!)

Miss you.

Lots of love from your Ron.

PS - The flat smells like dead flowers. Is this a Muggle thing? Your mother had a can in her hand and now everything stinks.

Drop me a note back with Pig and tell me how to make it go away.

**End**


End file.
